Inside the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program’s Free Therapy for Students

Mental health has long been a concern for those in the college world, and it’s only escalated since the pandemic. Answering this, Southern Oregon University’s master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program is offering one to one counseling in winter term, available to all students this winter. Psychology 318 is an experiential course, worth one credit, that pairs its participants with a graduate student facilitator. The course, labeled Psychology 318, Individual Exploration, highlights self exploration, improving interpersonal relationship skills, enhancing stress management tools, searching for positive changes to one’s lifestyle, and looking for one’s place in the world.

Of course, Psychology 318 also gives graduate students the benefit of hands on experience in the field. It is presented as something as an introduction to counseling and therapy– a non threatening, experimental environment where counselors in training can find their footing as soon to be therapists and students can expose themselves to the counseling process in a safe space, on their own terms. There are no prerequisites to take it, and the credit counts for upper division courses.

The course is open to the entire student body, and the only costs are the tuition for one credit. But it is geared towards students with little exposure to therapy, and hopes to help more college students gain the tools to start their own counseling journeys. The course’s managers are always eager to expand the number of participants. Students that take the course will be offered ten hours of therapy, with a private, one to one, in person, hour long session provided once per week (including an exit session, typically offered in the week immediately preceding finals week).

One thing in the course that is stressed heavily is meeting the needs of each individual student, and the graduate students are trained to tailor their sessions to each individual student’s needs and stated goals. The course is pass or fail, and the only homework is maintaining a journal with an entry after each counseling session, and submitting it to the instructor at the end of the term.

The class puts lots of emphasis on security. Other than the journal entries, the only documentation of a student’s participation would be records of the in person sessions, used to supervise graduate students’ behavior and ensure that they are complying with the ethical standards for counselors. These recordings are destroyed at the end of the term, with no one able to view them at all other than the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program’s supervisor.

Registration for winter term is already open for undergraduate seniors and juniors, and by Friday it will be open for all freshmen, even newly admitted students. The program is a great opportunity for new students struggling to make their way through campus life, those searching for their footing after some time at SOU, and anyone interested in self-exploration and counseling. 318’s course registration number is 4270.

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